"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the
animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel
nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest
lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams, (1722-1803)

Michele Bachmann has had her fair share of foreign policy stumbles, but she just hit a whole new level. According to a tweet from NBC News' Jamie Novogrod, Bachmann responded to the recent raiding of the British embassy in Iran, by saying that if she was President, she would close down the U.S. embassy there. There's just one problem: The U.S. has not had an embassy in Iran ever since the Iranian hostage crisis, when revolutionaries from the budding Islamic state held 52 Americans for 444 days.bete... Read More →

Sociopathic kleptocrat billionaire Micheal Bloomberg came back from his castle on Bermuda to announce that buying three terms as New York’s mayor is the bestest present he could buy someone as awesome as himself, because he has “the seventh biggest army in the world” in the form of the NYPD, his own personal military force. You know who else had their own huge army, before their heads rolled into a handcrafted French basket? READ MORE »

You were so sure this headline was finally at long last going to be referring to Rick Perry, but still no dice. (Seriously, though, WHEN???) This time it’s America’s one-time Sheriff of the Year Patrick Sullivan, the Republican former top law enforcement official of Arapahoe County, Colorado, who is in trouble for “the usual” with these closeted old right-wing queens, trying to get hold of some hottt peen action in exchange for meth.

And now everyone in Arapahoe County will pretend to be shocked that somehow a staunch Republican hater of even banal measures like medical marijuana legalization is secretly about as committed to upholding drug laws when there’s a gay hooker in the vicinity as Ted Haggard is to his straight Jesus. READ MORE »

LAS VEGAS (KSNV MyNews3) -- The notary who signed tens of thousands of false documents in a massive robo-signing scandal case was found dead in her home on Monday.

The notary, 43-year-old Tracy Lawrence, was supposed to be in court at 8:30 Monday morning for her sentencing hearing. When her attorney did not hear from her for more than an hour, Sr. Deputy Attorney General Robert Giunta asked for a bench warrant to be issued for Lawrence. The judge denied the request.

Police were sent to Lawrence's house to check on her after her lawyer expressed concern for her client's well-being. They found her body inside her home.

Metro Homicide Detectives are working currently the case. It is unclear if her death was due to natural causes, or if it was a suicide.

Detectives said this afternoon that they have ruled out homicide as a cause of death.

Last Monday, Lawrence pled guilty to only one criminal charge of notary fraud.

Lawrence came forward earlier this month and admitted that she had notarized around 25,000 fraudulent documents as part of a foreclosure fraud scheme.

Title officers Gary Trafford and Geraldine Sheppard of California are allegedly behind the fraud that involved forging signatures on tens of thousands of notices of default between 2005 and 2008. The two were indicted on more than 600 charges in a 439-page indictment filed on November 16.

The Nevada Attorney General is negotiating the terms of surrender for the pair. Both are expected to surrender sometime in December.

Here we have always assumed that Orly Taitz was some kind of comic relief goober invented by the universe to break up droll news cycles, but apparently some people still somehow take her seriously! Not real people of course, just a screamy handful of Republican state legislators in New Hampshire, this time, who got so red-faced worked up hollering angry old people words like “TREASON” over and over during a recent/inexplicable public hearing of her aging, withered fantasies that they managed to scare members of the state’s election commission into locking themselves into a room after they unanimously refused to remove Barack Obama’s name from the ballot. Creepy video after the jump! READ MORE »

Briefly popular ignoramus Herman Cain was already sinking in the GOP primary polls like every other random dingbat the party has puked up for consideration during this long, long 2012 campaign season. But the latest scandal, that he carried on a 13-year-long affair with a lady who was not his wife, seems to be enough to finish him off. In the “next several days,” Cain will decide whether he wants to go back to being a simple millionaire riding around in limos with all his ladies, promoting his books. READ MORE »

The Pat Robertson teevee show has been desegregated, apparently by force, and now allows a Negress interviewer to interview “her kind” (Condoleezza Rice). What are the mysterious black people up to, this Thanksgiving? The hip-hop? Smokin’ crack? Crunking? Voodoo?

Hankering for the Original Constitution days when they were slaves? No, worse. They are eating bizarre food dishes and claiming it’s part of American Thanksgiving. Pat Robertson is aghast. READ MORE »

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

The group One Wisconsin Now announced Tuesday it would offer a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of any individual guilty of fraudulently destroying or defacing recall petitions.

Yesterday, Mitt Romney released his first campaign ad, which quotes President Obama saying “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” But those weren’t Obama’s words; he was quoting a strategist for Sen. John McCain in 2008.

In response, the Romney campaign has defended this blatantly dishonest campaign tactic as “not out of bounds.” Thus, ThinkProgress has created this completely in-bounds “advertisement” quoting Romney, in his own words.

Thanksgiving hasn’t even happened yet and look, here already is a giant plate of half-putrefied “leftovers” to add to the compost bin: mutant overgrown toad wart Roger Ailes nearly (OH GOD, WHY NEARLY) evicted yammering reject Sarah Palin from his evil teevee space beams in an enraged fit right after she “announced” she was quitting the presidential race she never joined, because she failed at her sole remaining paid task of delivering this breaking non-information on Fox News. Sarah Palin told some other outlet first for the same reason she does anything: out of raw, brainless spite. READ MORE »

Hip hop group The Roots really don't like Michele Bachmann apparently. The band offered up an apparent musical editorial on the Republican's presidential campaign as she took the stage to talk to NBC late night host JImmy Fallon on Monday, playing a few bars of Fishbone's "Lyin' Ass Bitch." New York Magazine notes that the band has a history of taking jabs at guests via their choice of walk-on music, meaning the pick was likely not a coincidence [see update: they made their intent clear on Twitter]... Read More →

Monday, November 21, 2011

So much for that idea. Mitt Romney is rapidly walking back a proposal to partially privatize VA care after a wave of criticism from Democrats and veterans groups. "I have no proposal of that nature," Romney told the Nashua Telegraph on Monday. "We had a group of veterans and said, 'tell me about the quality of your care.' Some were concerned about the quality of their health care. I said, 'what kind of options do you have, what do you think about a system that let you go to private as well as VA... Read More →

Right-wing media recently pushed the discredited attack that President Obama called Americans "lazy." But right-wing media figures themselves have a history of suggesting that Americans -- particularly the poor, the unemployed, and union workers, among others -- are lazy or lack work ethic. Read More

“Disrupting the livelihoods of so many dedicated and hardworking people is extremely painful, but the loss of so much business left us no choice but to file these notices,” said Mr. Baum in a press release issued on Monday. A firm spokesman said it would have no further comment beyond the release…

On Saturday, Joe Nocera, The Times columnist who originally wrote about the firm’s Halloween party, published another column about the controversy. In it, he quoted an e-mail that Mr. Baum had sent him last week.

“Mr. Nocera — You have destroyed everything and everyone related to Steven J. Baum PC,” said the letter. “It took 40 years to build this firm and three weeks to tear down.”

It seems the homeless Halloween celebration did the firm in, but it should be noted that Baum’s firm continuously tangled with both the federal government and the New York Attorney General’s office over its practices.

The plan, which CLGC was demanding $850,000 to implement, was presented in a secret memo that was leaked to Hayes’ staff. The memo warns that Occupy Wall Street, particularly if it is embraced by the Democratic Party, threatens to “have very long-lasting political, policy, and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.”

Interestingly, the memo also cautioned that Tea Party protesters may join forces with Occupy Wall Street because “well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where [Occupy Wall Street] protesters and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism. [...] This combination has the potential to be explosive later in the year when media reports cover the next round of bonuses and contrast it with stories of millions of Americans making do with less this holiday season.”

In order to combat Occupy Wall Street’s growing movement, the firm offered to engage in research and advocacy to “undermine their credibility in a profound way.” This included researching activists’ financial histories and civil and criminal information, and monitoring social media. The goal of this research was to “create negative narratives of the [Occupy Wall Street] for high impact media placement to expose the backers of this movement”:

“Our Government Relations staff did receive the proposal – it was unsolicited and we chose not to act on it in any way,” said ABA spokesperson Jeff Sigmund to Hayes’ show. However, CLGC admits on its website that it has had ABA as a client before in the past, in addition to the Financial Services Roundtable, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Fidelity Investments, and other financial players.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

There’s a word I keep hearing lately: “technocrat.” Sometimes it’s used as a term of scorn — the creators of the euro, we’re told, were technocrats who failed to take human and cultural factors into account. Sometimes it’s a term of praise: the newly installed prime ministers of Greece and Italy are described as technocrats who will rise above politics and do what needs to be done.

I call foul. I know from technocrats; sometimes I even play one myself. And these people — the people who bullied Europe into adopting a common currency, the people who are bullying both Europe and the United States into austerity — aren’t technocrats. They are, instead, deeply impractical romantics.

They are, to be sure, a peculiarly boring breed of romantic, speaking in turgid prose rather than poetry. And the things they demand on behalf of their romantic visions are often cruel, involving huge sacrifices from ordinary workers and families. But the fact remains that those visions are driven by dreams about the way things should be rather than by a cool assessment of the way things really are.

And to save the world economy we must topple these dangerous romantics from their pedestals.

Let’s start with the creation of the euro. If you think that this was a project driven by careful calculation of costs and benefits, you have been misinformed.

The truth is that Europe’s march toward a common currency was, from the beginning, a dubious project on any objective economic analysis. The continent’s economies were too disparate to function smoothly with one-size-fits-all monetary policy, too likely to experience “asymmetric shocks” in which some countries slumped while others boomed. And unlike U.S. states, European countries weren’t part of a single nation with a unified budget and a labor market tied together by a common language.

So why did those “technocrats” push so hard for the euro, disregarding many warnings from economists? Partly it was the dream of European unification, which the Continent’s elite found so alluring that its members waved away practical objections. And partly it was a leap of economic faith, the hope — driven by the will to believe, despite vast evidence to the contrary — that everything would work out as long as nations practiced the Victorian virtues of price stability and fiscal prudence.

Sad to say, things did not work out as promised. But rather than adjusting to reality, those supposed technocrats just doubled down — insisting, for example, that Greece could avoid default through savage austerity, when anyone who actually did the math knew better.

Let me single out in particular the European Central Bank (E.C.B.), which is supposed to be the ultimate technocratic institution, and which has been especially notable for taking refuge in fantasy as things go wrong. Last year, for example, the bank affirmed its belief in the confidence fairy — that is, the claim that budget cuts in a depressed economy will actually promote expansion, by raising business and consumer confidence. Strange to say, that hasn’t happened anywhere.

And now, with Europe in crisis — a crisis that can’t be contained unless the E.C.B. steps in to stop the vicious circle of financial collapse — its leaders still cling to the notion that price stability cures all ills. Last week Mario Draghi, the E.C.B.’s new president, declared that “anchoring inflation expectations” is “the major contribution we can make in support of sustainable growth, employment creation and financial stability.”

This is an utterly fantastic claim to make at a time when expected European inflation is, if anything, too low, and what’s roiling the markets is fear of more or less immediate financial collapse. And it’s more like a religious proclamation than a technocratic assessment.

Just to be clear, this is not an anti-European rant, since we have our own pseudo-technocrats warping the policy debate. In particular, allegedly nonpartisan groups of “experts” — the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Concord Coalition, and so on — have been all too successful at hijacking the economic policy debate, shifting its focus from jobs to deficits.

Real technocrats would have asked why this makes sense at a time when the unemployment rate is 9 percent and the interest rate on U.S. debt is only 2 percent. But like the E.C.B., our fiscal scolds have their story about what’s important, and they’re sticking to it no matter what the data say.

So am I against technocrats? Not at all. I like technocrats — technocrats are friends of mine. And we need technical expertise to deal with our economic woes.

But our discourse is being badly distorted by ideologues and wishful thinkers — boring, cruel romantics — pretending to be technocrats. And it’s time to puncture their pretensions.

How did America’s heavily militarized security guards for the 1% spend the work week? Oh, just pepper-spraying sitting students in the face, macing old ladies, stomping peaceful protesters, yanking women around by their ponytails, destroying libraries and bloodying the faces of America’s citizens. You know, what they’ve dreamed of doing for decades.READ MORE »

Saturday, November 19, 2011

The birther wars continue. Orly Taitz, birther queen of California, personally filed a complaint in New Hampshire on Saturday that challenged President Obama’s U.S. citizenship and argued for his removal from the state’s ballot, reports the Concord Monitor.

New Hampshire’s electoral governing body, the Ballot Law Commission, turned down the complaint in a public hearing via 5-0 vote. It got pretty ugly shortly thereafter.

“Traitors!” screamed the members of the attending public. “Treason!”

“You have no decency! You have no honesty! You’re committing treason!”

The group of birthers, which included several New Hampshire state representatives, erupted after the decision, shouting at the commission attorneys as they tried to exit the hearing room. Another state representative apparently suggested committee members should cover their face with a mask if they ever found themselves in his district.

In her own report posted here, Orly Taitz assailed the commission as corrupt, citing as evidence the fact that all its members were Democrats.

“The level of corruption was unbelievable,” Taitz said. “We found out that all five members of the committee are Democrats. As I was presenting all of the evidence, people were listening and getting more and more angry.”

If indeed all members of the commission were Democrats, New Hampshire would have a major legal problem. Except Brad Cook, the chair of the commission, is a prominent Republican.

In case you caught the Huffington Post story about our exclusive this morning, you should know that they only had two paragraphs of a four-page memo.

We'll be posting the full memo today after the program so you can see it for yourselves, but we can tell you now that it's a well-known Washington lobbyist firm, Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, pitching an $850,000 plan to one of its Wall Streets clients...for punishing politicians who might express sympathy for Occupy Wall Street.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is specifically singled out for targeting, and he'll respond to this story on tomorrow's edition of Up. In the meantime, we're going to try to keep track of where and how this story gets picked up, so please give us a shout if you see it making the rounds...

Jonathan Larsen is the executive producer of Up w/ Chris Hayes. You can follow him on Twitter @JTLarsen.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Right-Wing Media Lay Groundwork To Blame Obama If Super Committee Does Not Reach a Deal The right wing media have claimed that President Obama is deliberately sabotaging the super committee's negotiations to reach a deal to decrease the deficit in an attempt to strengthen his re-election prospects. But Obama has repeatedly urged the super committee to come to a compromise, while the Republicans on the super committee have refused to compromise, instead proposing massive tax giveaways for the richest Americans and even more massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other programs Americans rely on. Read More

Throw It All Out: Schweizer's DOE Claims Rest On Bad Math In his new book Throw Them All Out, conservative author and Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer accuses the Department of Energy (DOE) of directing funds "to friends, cronies, and supporters" of President Obama. However, the claim relies on faulty math, and many of the individuals that Schweizer identifies as Obama supporters have also donated to Republicans. Read More

Old persons’ program 60 Minutes is about the only thing on the teevee that occasionally does journalism. So when the nation’s half-dozing seniors saw this report air last Sunday about how the representatives in Washington have turned the Halls of Congress into a Temple of Insider-Trading Whoredom, you knew there would be some serious upheaval, right?

Ha ha, just kidding! All that’s happening is Joe Lieberman, winner of the Most Hated Man in Washington Award for 10 years running, is joining forces with unwanted teabagger Scott Brown, along with various other grandstanders who will have Bipartisan meetings to “probe” the situation they all know about and profit from. READ MORE »

HOO-WEE, everyone strap in, the St. Petersburg Times has discovered that one of the more frothing racist loons littering the comments section on its news articles with vulgar diatribes is — GASP — an elected Republican officeholder!

These types of reports are the only thing on the Internet more common than those annoying “FIVE SECRETS FOR A FLATTER TUMMY” ads everywhere, but okay, technically this is “newsworthy” because in addition to the bucketfuls of hateful slop that this Pinellas County Commissioner Norm Roche regularly dumped under his brilliant commenter handle “Reality,” he also went around anonymously insulting all the local officials in his county (which includes St. Petersburg) that he apparently just pretends to work with when he isn’t feverishly spewing bile at them online. READ MORE »

In a brief order, the justices brushed aside arguments by Lisa Hauser, the governor's attorney, that Brewer's decision was not subject to court review.

More to the point, they said that Brewer's power to oust a commissioner is limited to situations of substantial neglect of duty or gross misconduct. The justices said that nothing the governor alleged that Mathis did rises to that level.

Technically speaking, Thursday's order does not prevent Brewer from trying to fire Mathis again.

But the governor will have to act quickly. The order frees Mathis to resume her duties -- and, presumably, to cast the deciding vote on the five-member panel to adopt new congressional and legislative maps.

We've posted manytimes about the questionable activities of Goldline, the gold dealer that Glenn Beck has relentlessly promoted. Now, the Los Angeles Times has reported that criminal charges have been filed against the company, accusing it of running a "bait and switch" operation that sold investors gold coins at a huge markup instead of the gold bullion they sought to buy. (h/t/ Hula)

Rick Perry was going to save the Republicans from having to vote for a liberal Mormon from Taxachusetts, but then Rick Perry actually opened his mouth, and everybody outside of Texas realized for the first time that he’s an imbecile. It seemed Perry had everything it took to become president of America, as he is a dumb Texan governor who will do whatever he’s told by the oil companies, but these days not even his alleged supporters will give him any money. READ MORE »

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Whitewash: Fox Host Tries To Dismiss "Fox News Lies" Chants Following a live report from New York City's Zuccotti Park in which protesters chanted "Fox News lies," Fox Business host Gerri Willis claimed that Fox is simply "trying to cover the story just like everybody else." However, Fox hosts and contributors have pushed lies, smears, and attacks about the Occupy Wall Street movement. Read More

Hannity Denies The Existence Of Food Deserts In America During an attack on Michelle Obama for promoting greater access to grocery stores as a way to deal with childhood obesity, Sean Hannity claimed that there are "grocery stores everywhere." In fact, millions of Americans live more than one mile from a grocery store and do not have access to a car, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that greater access to grocery stores is related to a reduced risk for childhood obesity. Read More

In a Washington Post column, Michael Gerson accused the Obama administration of "systematic anti-Catholic bias," pointing to its decision to end funding for anti-sex trafficking programs run by Catholic bishops that do not refer women who have been raped for abortions. In fact, large majorities of Catholics support allowing women who have been raped to have access to abortion.

Bayh's Attack On EPA Is A Litany Of Industry Talking Points Indiana's Journal Gazette published a flawed op-ed by Evan Bayh that repeats industry talking points in an effort to paint an inaccurate, negative picture of EPA's long-overdue rule to limit air toxics emissions from coal plants. The Journal Gazette fails to disclose that Bayh has ties to companies that stand to benefit from dismantling the rules and was hired by the Chamber of Commerce to "carry" its anti-regulatory message around the country. Read More

Right-Wing Media Use CBO Director's Testimony To Launch Bogus Attack On Stimulus Right-wing media have suggested that Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf "admitted" in recent Senate testimony that the stimulus "will shrink the economy." In fact, while the CBO predicted the plan would reduce GDP by between 0.1 and 0.3 percent in 2019, economists say the program has thus far increased output and employment, as was predicted. Read More

Pop quiz time! How many of the following things in this paraphrase of some dumb thing Stay-Puft clone Newt Gingrich said during a recent GOP debate are true: “The $300,000 I was paid by Freddie Mac were for my services as, uh, a historian.” Correct answer: ZERO. Newt was paid at least $1.6 million, and part of his job was to shill Freddie Mac’s good name to congressional Republicans who wanted to burn the government-backed mortgage giant to the ground. Of course, it also turns out that Newt was earning all these piles of silly monies by lying about his True Feelings, since he immediately started to trash Freddie Mac the minute he stopped getting their checks. READ MORE »

One of the funniest things Michelle Bachmann ever did – this week! – was to name her new book “Core of Conviction,” by which she means she should be convicted for being criminally insane. And now, courtesy of some tortured bet-losing news room intern who was forced to read an advance copy of her certifiable rantings, a sneak peek: she, uh, thinks that former President George W. Bush (the cute one) is a raging “socialist” for bailing out the banking industry, because Michele Bachmann has no idea what the word “socialist” or any other words at all even mean. READ MORE »

Okay, seriously, Herman Cain, just stop, stop right now, stop, STOP: “I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy. Just thought I’d throw that out,” he told a Journal-Sentinel reporter in the wake of the paper’s insane interview with him revealing that he is not entirely sure what “Libya” is. Because “knowing things” is not exactly the point of being President now, is it? READ MORE »

CBO Director Doug Elmendorf’s testimony before the Senate Budget Committee Tuesday was full of bad news for the unemployed, and thus for President Obama. This is the stuff Republicans blasted out to reporters: Unemployment will likely be sky high through next year, GDP growth has been and will continue to be anemic.

But his prepared remarks confirm this is in part a product of the GOP’s unwillingness to pass the big-ticket items in Obama’s jobs bill. And they also imply that the GOP’s economic counter-proposals would do almost nothing to actually improve things................

Pop quiz time! How many of the following things in this paraphrase of some dumb thing Stay-Puft clone Newt Gingrich said during a recent GOP debate are true: “The $300,000 I was paid by Freddie Mac were for my services as, uh, a historian.” Correct answer: ZERO.

Newt was paid at least $1.6 million, and part of his job was to shill Freddie Mac’s good name to congressional Republicans who wanted to burn the government-backed mortgage giant to the ground. Of course, it also turns out that Newt was earning all these piles of silly monies by lying about his true feelings, since he immediately started to trash Freddie Mac the minute he stopped getting their checks. READ MORE »

Last night, former Bush official Karl Rove appeared at Johns Hopkins University to speak as a part of the annual Milton S. Eisenhower Symposium. Rove soon discovered that he wasn’t going to deliver his right-wing rhetoric unopposed, as a cry of “Mic Check!” rang out among the audience.

“Karl Rove is the architect of Occupy Iraq, the architect of Occupy Afghanistan!” yelled the demonstrators. Occupy Baltimore had infiltrated the crowd and began chanting against Rove. “Who gave you the right to occupy America?” asked Rove to the protesters, apparently unaware of the Bill of Rights. As they repeated their slogan, “We are the 99 percent!” Rove petulantly responded, “No you’re not!” He snidely added, “You wanna keep jumping up and yelling that you’re the 99 percent? How presumptuous and arrogant can you think are!” Watch Occupy Baltimore confront Rove:

America’s greatest president was George H.W. Bush (the old one), because he bombed a lot of Mexicans somewhere, Panama maybe? Oh and one time he had a war in Iraq, but that was lame because it only lasted a few days and didn’t kill a million people and there was no Abu Ghraib torture pornography.

Also, he said “read my lips,” which is gross, and then he raised taxes a little teeny tiny bit on the billionaires even though mostly they had their taxes cut. So, in many ways, George H.W. Bush was a dismal failure, just like the new U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier George H.W. Bush, which has no working toilets for like 5,000 dudes and some ladies too, who are holding it in so long they’re having “health problems.” READ MORE »

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Following a live report from New York City's Zuccotti Park in which protesters chanted "Fox News lies," Fox Business host Gerri Willis claimed that Fox is simply "trying to cover the story just like everybody else." However, Fox hosts and contributors have pushed lies, smears, and attacks about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Willis: "I Have No Idea What They're Talking About." After airing a live report from Fox Business reporter Adam Shapiro during which a crowd at Zuccotti Park chanted "Fox News lies," Willis responded: "I have no idea what they're talking about. We're trying to cover the story just like everybody else there." She continued: "Every time I hear a crowd chant that, I get really, really angry, because Fox News -- just like everybody else -- is trying to cover the story." [Fox Business, The Willis Report, 11/15/11]

But Fox News Repeatedly Aired Lies, Smears, Attacks About Protesters

Fox News: "ACORN Playing Behind Scenes Role In 'Occupy' Movement." FoxNews.com claimed that ACORN, which disbanded in November 2010, is playing a "behind [the] scenes role" in Occupy Wall Street. Fox alleged that the group New York Communities for Change (NYCC) -- which is led by a former ACORN official -- is paying people to join protests and collecting money to fund OWS activities. [FoxNews.com, 10/26/11, via Media Matters]

Special Report's Baier Claimed Protests Were Supported By Ayatollah Khamenei And Hugo Chavez.Special Report anchor Bret Baier claimed that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez "threw his support behind protesters" at Occupy Wall Street. A day later, he also claimed that the protests had "elicit[ed] support" from Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei. [Fox News, Special Report with Bret Baier, 10/11/11; 10/12/11, via Media Matters]

Fox's Trotta On Occupy Wall Street Website: "What You Will Read Is The Ravings Of What Sounds Like The Unabomber." On the October 8 edition of Fox News' America's News HQ, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta claimed, "I advise anybody who has a sense of humor left about this to go to OccupyWallStreet.com, and what you will read is the ravings of what sounds like the Unabomber. ... [I]t's certainly better going down there and carrying signs than going out and hitting the pavement for a job." [Fox News, America's News HQ, 10/8/11, via Media Matters]

Hannity Graphic Labeled Protesters "Lunatics Of The Left Wing." During the September 30 edition of Fox News' Hannity, an on-screen graphic aired while the co-hosts discussed the protests, reading, "Lunatics of the left wing":

Fox's Watters: Wall Street Protesters Are "The Sludge" Of "Every Left-Wing Cause." On the September 30 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News producer Jesse Watters said of the protests: "I think if you put every single left-wing cause into a blender and hit power, this is the sludge you'd get. And it's basically anti-capitalism. And they want to redistribute the wealth. But if you eliminate capitalism, there is no wealth to redistribute." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 9/30/11, via Media Matters]

Guilfoyle: Protesters Have "Absolutely No Purpose Or Focus" And Are "Just Looking To ... Dirty The Streets." On the September 30 edition of Fox News' Hannity, Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle said of the protests: "It's like Woodstock meets Burning Man meets people with absolutely no purpose or focus in life. No wonder, they have nothing but free time to be down there. They make up a slogan or a cause as they go along. And they are just looking to, like, go out there and dirty the streets. And they really don't have any, like, idea about what they are doing there." [Fox News, Hannity, 9/30/11, via Media Matters]

Crowley: Protesters Are "Useful Idiots Who Probably Haven't Paid Much In Taxes Their Whole Life." On the October 10 edition of Fox News' Your World, Fox News contributor Monica Crowley called the protesters "useful idiots who probably haven't paid much in taxes their whole life, have no concept -- and all they know is, 'Oh, profit is a four-letter word, corporations and rich folks -- millionaires and billionaires are evil, they need to be taxed more.' As if they don't pay enough." [Fox News, Your World, 10/10/11, via Media Matters]

Johnson: "I Would Think" Wall Street Protesters "Are Deluded In A Lot Of Ways." On the October 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson Jr. attacked the Occupy Wall Street protesters, claiming, "Clearly, I would think these folks are deluded in a lot of ways and probably provide the best argument for national service for 18-year-olds that we have ever seen." Johnson later said of the protests: "I don't know what it is. I don't think they know what it is. But it's costing Americans millions of dollars in tax dollars in order to arrest them." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 10/3/11, via Media Matters]

Notorious fringe-right “originalist” boobs Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas were so happy with the announcement that the Supreme Court will be hearing a challenge to the health care reform law that they celebrated immediately afterward by boozing it up with the legal team that will be arguing against the law. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Scalia/Thomas duo hit a Federalist Society dinner to pretend to listen to what other people think about the Obamacare law before they eventually and inevitably knock it down. READ MORE »

Police have uncovered new evidence that phone hacking was endemic at Rupert Murdoch's News International until as recently as 2009 – part of a "thriving cottage industry" of lawbreaking that involved "at least" 28 of the company's employees, the Leveson Inquiry was told yesterday.

The dramatic first proceedings of the judicial inquiry into press standards also heard that notebooks seized in 2006 from the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who carried out phone hacking for the News of the World, suggest he also worked for The Sun and "maybe" the Daily Mirror.

The inquiry has been provided with material from Scotland Yard that suggests "wide-ranging, illegal activity" at Wapping dating back to the hacking of the phone of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002 and continuing "until at least 2009" – three years after two employees were arrested and later jailed for hacking.

The suggestion that the Yard's Operation Weeting has discovered evidence beyond Mulcaire's notebooks that voicemail interception carried on beyond his imprisonment in 2007 would be devastating for the Murdoch empire. Senior executives vowed repeatedly that the practice was halted in 2006.

If information is uncovered that the Mirror commissioned Mulcaire to hack phones, it would be the first time that a non-Murdoch newspaper has been implicated in the scandal.

The hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London was told that the names of the disgraced NOTW royal editor Clive Goodman and at least 27 other NI employees appeared as so-called "corner names" in notes seized by police from Mulcaire's home in 2006. The private investigator was in the habit of identifying those who commissioned him by writing their name in the top corner of each notebook page.

Lord Justice Leveson warned newspapers not to victimise inquiry witnesses, saying that if they did so he might draw inferences about ethics that would be relevant to his final recommendations................

Monday, November 14, 2011

1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia4. Aurora Australis south of Australia5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean7. Halfway around the World8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam14. Views of the Mideast at Night15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night

Fox Ignores Bipartisan Health, Environmental Concerns To Claim Keystone Decision Was "Political" Fox News figures have been claiming that the Obama administration's decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline project puts "politics ahead of jobs for the American people." But Fox failed to report on health and environmental concerns raised by the Keystone project; Fox also failed to report that it was unpopular with officials of both parties and residents of the Nebraskan communities where it would have been located. Read More

WSJ Distorts Osirak Strike Outcome To Justify Pre-Emptive Strike Against Iran's Nuclear Facilities In a November 11 editorial, The Wall Street Journal claimed that a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities would indefinitely hamper its ability to build nuclear weapons, based on Israel's strike against Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. However, experts contend there is no evidence to suggest the aerial bombardment of the Osirak reactor delayed or deterred the Saddam Hussein regime's subsequent push to develop nuclear weapons. Read More

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court. The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pore over the petitions for review. One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide. The justices agreed to hear the suit; indeed, a landmark 5 1/2-hour argument is expected in March, and the outcome is likely to further roil the 2012 presidential race, which will be in full swing by the time the court’s decision is released. The lawyer who will stand before the court and argue that the law should be thrown out is likely to be Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration. Clement’s law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles. Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business. Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation. The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court's conference over the case. In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law. The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.....................................

Blathering reject Michele Bachmann showed off her fancy foreign policy knowledge at Saturday’s dull GOP debate by noting that the real capitalists over there in China don’t give out food stamps according to her expert sources (Space Lizard Jeebus), which is why they are kicking America’s socialist economy in the ass. Why can’t America be as capitalist as China? READ MORE »

An anti-'vote fraud' Tea Party group, with a spin off group organizing poll watches nationwide next year, is hosting a Texas event for Matthew Vadum, the guy who doesn't think poor people should be voting at all, at least it should be made as hard as possible. It's a bold move since most anti-'vote fraud' outfits go with the pretense that their aim is simply to make sure there's no fraudulent voting. But Vadum's appearance makes clear that both sides of the 'vote fraud' story seem to know what the score is.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Monica Crowley appeared on Hannity last Wednesday (11/9/11) and did her part to defend Herman Cain by attacking the so-called liberal media for having the nerve to ask him a debate question about allegations of sexual harassment against him – as if she wouldn’t be up in arms if a moderator had failed to ask the same question of a liberal candidate had he or she been in that position. Crowley said smugly, “At large, the American people are sick of political correctness and they’re sick of attack politics.” Oh, really? Then I’m looking forward to a new and improved Monica Crowley. Because the one I know has always reveled in attack politics.